


this blue neighbourhood

by andfinallywearehome



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, also some background james/q, childhood friends!au, low-key bookshop!au, no nine year old realistically reads like this but i ran with it, there aren't enough fics for these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 02:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15110219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andfinallywearehome/pseuds/andfinallywearehome
Summary: "I'll bring the book back soon," she says, just before they say goodbye, and Madeleine simply gives her another shy kind of smile.“I know.”(or, the one where eve and madeleine live just down the street from each other, but take the long way round when it comes to falling in love)





	this blue neighbourhood

**Author's Note:**

> did i just write several thousand words of fic about two people who have never canonically spoken on screen? yes, yes i did. and, oh look, it's more childhood!au fic. i don't know how i feel about this finished work but i've read the same words so many times that i thought i might as well just post it.
> 
>  
> 
> title comes from the song Wild by troye sivan, and i own nothing recognisable.

Eve is nine years old when she watches the scene over the front gate, as the three moving vans block off the turning that leads to the main road. Men and women she doesn't recognise carry bits of furniture into the house at the end of the street, the one that used to belong to a man named Mallory, the one that hasn’t been on the market very long. Eve hopes the new neighbours will be more cheerful than Mallory, who had been infamous for always being seen with a scowl on his face, like he was permanently annoyed with the world. 

It isn't long before that house on the corner is suddenly not a dull shade of red brick like the rest, but a pale shade of cornflower blue, a colourful bookend to their street. Eve walks past it with her parents one day after school, and sees that a sign has been nailed above the door, and the word _books_ stick out to her more than anything else - she's always been a bookworm at heart, she can't help it.

By the time the weekend rolls around, her mum and dad have decided to pay their new neighbours a visit. They get talking with the man at the counter of this bookshop that has suddenly sprung up, leaving Eve to wander amongst the shelves by herself. They’re not very organised, the shelves in this place - where the library at school is alphabetised meticulously, here the books have simply been shoved wherever there seems to be room. You could get lost in here (although, Eve reasons, being lost in a bookshop isn’t exactly the worst place to get lost).

Quite suddenly, she stumbles across a small girl in the furthest corner at the back of the shop, hidden from view in amongst the cluttered shelves. She looks to be about Eve’s age, tufty blonde hair tumbling around her face, curled up with a book of her own.

Eve clears her throat to get her to look up, and she jumps.

“Hi.”

“Hello," she replies after a moment, and she's so quiet that Eve can barely hear her. There's a melodic accent to her voice, and Eve likes it, even if she can’t place it.

She crawls into the space beside her, pulling her legs up so that they both fit. She nods to the book, protectively held in the girl's lap.

"What are you reading?"

The girl reluctantly relaxes her grip on the tatty paperback in her hand, enough to let Eve have a closer look. The faded title on the cover says _Pride and Prejudice_. It doesn't look anything like the books that Eve has in her room, or the books in her classroom that they lend out for her to take home.

"What's it about?" She asks.

"Love." Eve raises an eyebrow, and she elaborates. "It's about a man and a woman who don't like each other for ages, and then they get married."

Eve's brow furrows. "Why would they get married if they don't like each other?"

"He's supposed to get better by the end.” She’s wrinkling her nose now, in distaste. “I don't think he does."

"That doesn't sound like love.”

“I know.”

“She should marry someone who is _always_ nice."

"I _know_ ,” the girl says, more enthusiastic this time. Then: “I'm Madeleine."

"I'm Eve. I live just up the street. My mum and dad wanted to come and meet the new people who moved in." She raises an eyebrow, curious. “Where are your parents? Do they know you’re back here?”

"My dad owns the shop." Madeleine fondly smiles down at the book in her lap. “We live in the flat upstairs.”

“So you get to live here with all these books?”

“It’s not as nice as you think. They’re not mine. My dad doesn’t let me touch them in case I damage them and we can’t sell them.” The _Pride and Prejudice_ book, the one she had been cradling a moment ago like it’s something precious, is pushed into Eve’s hands, almost shyly. "You can borrow this one, though, if you like."

"Are you sure?"

"I've read it lots of times before.” She smiles again, this time at Eve. “It would be nice to have a friend who has read it too."

"Eve!" A voice startles the two of them out of their conversation, and Eve looks up just as her mother's face appears round the shelf. "There you are. I was wondering where you’d got to.” She eyes the blonde girl next to her. “Who’s this?"

"Madeleine."

"Ah.” Her mum nods. “I think your father's looking for you."

The two of them crawl out from their corner behind the shelf, Eve still with the book clutched to her chest.

"I'll bring the book back soon," she says, just before they say goodbye, and Madeleine simply gives her another shy kind of smile.

“I know.”

 

+

 

Eve is right. _Pride and Prejudice_ isn't a good love story. She doesn't like Mr Darcy, or Elisabeth, at _all_.

"Aren't you a little young to be reading books like that?" Her mum asks, upon hearing her complain about these characters for at least the fifth time that day, but she doesn't take the book off her, so it doesn't seem that much of an issue. Maybe her parents are just happy that she’s reading, Eve thinks. Most parents are happy when their child reads.

The morning after she finishes the book, pulling faces at how Elisabeth supposedly sees the error of her ways, she arrives at school to find Madeleine has been put in her class. She’s sitting at the front of the room by herself, looking a little lost. Eve quickly grabs her by the hand and drags her over to her usual table, to sit with her and her friend James, who eyes the newcomer suspiciously until Madeleine quietly compliments one of his drawings. James perks up instantly and decides that she is allowed to stay. Eve simply rolls her eyes, but is glad that the two people she would call friends don’t hate each other.

Because they only live a few houses apart, Eve and Madeleine share the walk home at the end of the day after James gets picked up by his aunt. They run ahead of Eve’s parents, and laugh as they do so, talking mostly about the book and how ridiculous the love story really is. Eve is allowed to stop by the bookshop for a few minutes before heading on to her own house, and Madeleine presses another book into her hands, this one also by the same Jane Austen woman.

"This one is much better," she promises. Eve takes a look at the title: _Northanger Abbey_.

"I'll bring it back as soon as I'm finished," she says.

Madeleine smiles." I know you will."

 

+

 

Madeleine only ever seems to get really passionate when it comes to her books. That’s something that Eve picks up on after a while of knowing her. She's always been quite shy, even around James and Eve who are her closest friends (James has no interest in the actual reading part, but he likes to feel included, and so he sits with them when they talk about books and nods like he knows what’s going on).

The strongest emotion Eve has ever seen her show is nearly a year after their first meeting, when she comes into school clutching a copy of _Wuthering Heights_ and places it on the table in front of Eve.

"You have to read this," is all she says, as firmly as a small ten year old can.

Eve looks up from the copy of _Emma_ Madeleine had leant her only two days prior. James, sat next to her, is too busy doodling on his homework to pay any attention.

"I haven't finished this one yet -" she starts to say, but it’s not good enough.

"It doesn't matter." Madeleine's eyes burn into hers, bright and shining and so very blue. "Read this."

 

+ 

 

Eve abandons _Emma_ after school that day, and starts to read _Wuthering Heights_.

She cries.

She cries harder than she's ever cried over a book before, and her mum finds her under the covers with her torch at two in the morning, trying to muffle her sobs. She doesn't find out until later that a conversation takes place between her mother and Mr White, Madeleine's father, where it is politely agreed - and then firmly enforced - that the little book club should come to an end (or, at least, move on to more age appropriate books).

Of course, Eve has to know what happens to Catherine and Heathcliff in the end, so, from then on, James becomes their book smuggler, hiding the paperback in his house until he sees Eve at school and she can read over break and lunch. James grumbles about it at first, of _course_ he does, but the promise of all of Eve's packets of cheese and onion crisps for the next two weeks win him over in the end. Eve finishes _Wuthering Heights_ , and then immediately moves on to _Tess of the D'urbervilles_ , which has her crying harder than the previous book, huddled in the toilets over lunch. Madeleine pulls herself up onto the sink and holds her until she stops, mopping her best friend’s tears up with her sleeve. She also lets Eve lay her head on her shoulder as they read the final chapter together.

At one point they hold hands for comfort. Despite her concern for Tess and her fate, Eve can’t ignore the fact that it feels good.

 

+ 

 

Turning eleven shakes things up a little. Eve and James are being sent to the same high school, the one where most of the kids from their primary school are going, but Mr White places Madeleine in the posh school on the other side of town, no matter how much Madeleine pleads that she just wants to go to school with people she knows.

At least, Eve reasons, trying to find a silver lining in all this, now that they're in high school they are going to be expected to read all the books they were previously told not to, which means the book club can continue and James no longer has to be implicated in their secret trade.

The two of them go to Madeleine’s for dinner on the day before school starts, and end up sitting in the small yard around the back of the shop, on the green bench with the flaking paint. Madeleine wraps her arms around them, looking like she’s about to cry when she talks about how she doesn’t want to leave them for a new school, and Eve hopes that this isn't the last time they ever do something like this. Although they never mention it, they all know that friendships can drift apart in high school.

And, boy, high school certainly is different. James, her classmate since they first learnt to read and write, is no longer in all of her classes, and she flounders in those first couple of days until she manages to strike up conversation with a boy named Bill Tanner. She seeks out James at lunch time, dragging Bill with her, only to find he's found a person of his own - Q, short for Quinn, a boy with dark hair and glasses. Something about him reminds her a little of Madeleine, and Eve feels a pang of _something_ in her chest as she thinks of her best friend. At least she has James in this strange new place. Madeleine, on the other side of town, has no one.

She goes to see her after school almost straight away, and hugs her almost to apologise, to which Madeleine simply smiles and hands her _The Great Gatsby_.

"Gatsby likes the wrong person," is all she says, before Eve has to be home for dinner on time.

 

+ 

 

Madeleine is right, as usual. Gatsby would have been so much better off with his best friend Nick.

 

+ 

 

"I don't see why you're making such a big deal out of this," Eve says, one afternoon during physics, the one class she shares with James this year. It's early February, halfway through year nine, and James is currently complaining about how lonely he always is on valentines day, even if he’s only fourteen. Some things, Eve thinks, will never change. "It's just one day. Love is supposed to be forever." James scoffs at that. _Typical_. "If you're that desperate -"

"I'm not _desperate_ ," James says, indignant.

"- why don't you just ask someone out? What about that girl Lucia? You like her, right?"

James pulls a face. "I tried asking. She said no."

"Well, what about - ?"

"Then she said no again," James continues. "And again. And again. _And_ again. Just to make sure I knew that her answer was no."

"At least she didn't lead you on."

"At least then I wouldn't be lonely."

"Get over yourself. You can bitch about being lonely when you're thirty and single." James looks horrified at that, and she laughs again. “You don't have to like someone right now. Plenty of time for that later."

"I _do_ like someone," James says, and his ears start to go a little pink. Eve raises an eyebrow. This is new.

"Well, there you go. Ask her."

"I can’t.” He sighs. “I don't want to ruin what we have."

"You won't! If they're friends with you already, they must see something in your sparkling personality."

Usually, that kind of jibe would earn her one in return. This time, however, James simply looks at her with hope in those wide blue eyes of his.

“You think?"

Eve rolls her eyes. Somewhere along the line, it’s become general consensus that people like Lucia are mad to turn down the one and only James Bond. "I _know_."

James nods, and then changes the subject, moving onto how well Bill did in the school football match two days earlier. Eve pushes the conversation to the back of her mind, bringing it up again only when she’s pushing open the door to the bookshop with the cornflower blue walls, grinning when she finds Madeleine watching the counter. Now that she’s considered _responsible enough_ , it’s not uncommon for her father to go run errands and leave her in charge on her own.

Forgetting the usual greetings, Eve says: "You won't believe what James said to me today."

Madeleine’s eyebrow quirks up, surprised. "You know?"

Eve, cheerful a few moments ago, frowns. "Know what?"

She curls a strand of blonde hair around her finger, before letting it bounce back into place. "James just called and asked me to see a film with him next week."

It’s like the air has just been knocked from her lungs. "Oh." At least this clears up what James meant earlier. She clutches the copy of _The Great Gatsby_ , the one she had been planning to return. "What did you say?"

Madeleine gives a half shrug. "I said I would."

Eve's breath rushes out of her again. She really doesn’t feel good about this.

"Do you like him like that?"

"I - maybe a little? I don't know." She leans back in the chair behind the till and sighs, reaching up to stretch her arms over her head. For some reason, Eve finds it very distracting. "We've been friends for a long time now. I wouldn’t want to mess anything up. But I also think it could go somewhere, you know?"

Eve has to clear her throat before she can speak. "If that's what you think."

She still has _The Great Gatsby_ when she returns home that night.

 

+

 

Eve is sure that it won't work out.

She feels bad, wanting this, whatever this is, to fail between two people she cares about, and yet some part of her dares to hope. Maybe it’s because they're Madeleine and James. They are the same two people she has known since primary school. They're _friends_. They work as friends.

When a first date turns into a second, then a third, then a _six month anniversary_ , she's not so sure.

 

+

 

It doesn't take her long to figure out she's in love with Madeleine.

Or rather, Q figures it out for her.

Q, for some reason, has never really liked Madeleine, even when they were younger and didn’t have all this annoying teenage angst to worry about. It’s even more apparent now; Eve only has to glance his way on group outings to see him watching the couple with a harrowing glare that he tries to cover up when he thinks someone (James) will notice. Q, she thinks, is a darling, but he’s never been too good at hiding his feelings, and this includes his rather hopeless crush on James.

"Doesn’t it take one to know one?" he says when Eve later confronts him about it, eyebrow raised.

“Ew.” She wrinkles her nose up at the thought. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t fancy James.”

“Who said I was talking about James?” At her silence, Q gives her a wry smile. “Welcome to the Being In Love With Your Best Friend club. If I’d have known sooner I would have made us matching shirts.”

Eve’s too busy thinking to laugh at the joke. She has, if she’s being honest with herself, always had an inkling that she likes women like that, that she’s always wanted a girlfriend far more than she has _ever_ wanted a boyfriend. Now she has the answer. Why would she ever want a boyfriend when she’s already completely in love with her best friend?

_Crap_.

 

+

 

Eve has accepted that it's never going to happen between her and Madeleine, so when she and James break up, it’s a surprise. They’ve been committed for nearly a year by this point, and so she’s not expecting to be called to the house at the end of the street at around midnight only to find Madeleine crying on the front porch of the shop. From what Eve can gather, James has his own issues to work out, ones he can't talk about with her, and that he just needs space to go his own way. Eve holds her whilst she cries and wills her heart to stop hammering in her chest so that her stupid crush doesn't get in the way of her comforting her best friend as she nurses her first broken heart.

She texts James a series of texts to ask what on earth is going on, and eventually he responds. She finds him at school the next day, hiding out behind the bike sheds at lunch time.

"I just don’t understand,” Eve says, for possibly the fifth time. “You had a good thing going. I thought you really liked each other."

"We do. That’s not the problem. I’ve just got my own stuff to work out first.”

Eve raises an eyebrow. From what she’s seen, James’ life as a fifteen year old consists solely of GCSEs, his relationship, various sports teams, and his unwavering determination to annoy his aunt as much as possible. "Like what?"

James sighs, looking up at her from under the hoodie he's wearing underneath his mandatory blazer. "You know I've always liked girls. "

Realisation starts to dawn on her. "But?"

“ _But -_ ” He hesitates, and then pushes through “- I've always liked boys too."

"Oh, honey." Eve wraps an arm around him, right there and then, and he leans against her shoulder. She hopes, by some mad logic, that he can just sense that he’s not alone in this. "How long have you known?"

"A while now. I can't be with someone I'm not honest with."

"That’s incredibly mature of you."

A smile flickers on his face for a moment. "I have my moments."

Eve smiles along with him.

 

+ 

 

Whilst incredibly awkward between Madeleine and James for a while - Eve is sure she doesn't want to know every little detail about what went on between them - things go back to normal, for the most part. Since James decides to be brave and come out publicly with his bisexuality, she makes the decision to tell him and Madeleine that she's a lesbian, and both of them shower her with hugs and words of nothing but kindness.

Apparently she's not the only one who is gay. Q, to everyone’s surprise but hers, comes out two months later.

"Am I the only straight one here?" Bill asks over lunch one day, and they all share a laugh, because it might just be true.

With the end of their last year of high school approaching, Eve asks another girl called Sévérine to the prom, and Q asks a boy called Alec, who happens to be friends with James. James claims he doesn't need a date - he's a whole experience by himself - but Eve is sure she catches him several times watching Q with an almost wistful expression on his face and wants to laugh. It’s almost like the situations are reversed. She wonders if Q has gotten over him yet, and sometimes, with the way _Q_ watches _him_ , she thinks there might be hope for James yet. She silently wishes him better luck with Q than she herself has had with Madeleine - Madeleine, who is most certainly very straight.

Prom is the best night she's had in a while. She kisses Sévérine on the car journey there, whilst James chortles from the front passenger seat, and her stomach flips in a way that just feels _right_ , even if she tries very hard not to think of Madeleine the entire time. James, the _experience_ , wins prom king half an hour after they arrive, and Lucia wins prom queen, which means they get to have the first dance to themselves. Marco, Lucia's actual date, glares at them from the crowd, and James makes sure to grin smugly every time they spin past him.

Madeleine sends her a Snapchat of her own prom. It's a thousand times posher than the one opened by James and Lucia, but they're all enjoying themselves, and Eve sends her several Snapchats back of their night. She doesn't know who Madeleine has taken as her date - a guy named Max, if she remembers correctly (James has taken to calling him C, an abbreviation for SC, which in itself is a further abbreviation of Sympathy Choice). Still, they meet at the bookshop the next day and swap the most outrageous stories from their nights, laughing all the while.

"Call this a belated prom gift," Madeleine says, just before she has to leave, and hands her a book - something by Sarah Waters.

"You know," Eve replies, "in all the years we’ve done this, I've never given you one book to borrow."

Madeleine beams. "That’s because you are all I need."

Eve's heart gives a traitorous jump, and she spends the next twenty minutes reminding herself that her best friend doesn't mean it _that_ way.

 

+

 

Unlike the move to high school, the move to college changes nothing. The only difference is that Madeleine is now with them permanently, having chosen to continue her studies with her friends.

Finally, Eve thinks, things are as they should be.

Madeleine excels in Science and Psychology, and decides that, instead of taking over the shop when she's old enough, she wants to go off to university and become a psychologist. Eve is happy for her, she really is, but the idea of her leaving makes her stomach churn, because absence makes the heart grow fonder and her heart is already _too_ fond. She herself has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and she’s comforted by the fact that James doesn’t know either.

“At the end of the day, it’s always just you and me, Moneypenny,” he says, which earns him a sharp elbow to the side and a fond smile. 

The school throws a dance for the year thirteens that leave, similar to prom but with alcoholic punch that the staff actually condone. James and Q dance around each other for weeks leading up to it, clearly wanting to ask the other but being too scared to. It's extra stress that Eve, during A Levels, doesn't need.

"I hope you're not being serious," she says firmly, amidst Q's protesting over the phone three days before the event. "After the fuss you made the other day about whether or not you're asking him in the first place, you’re not chickening out now."

(She later learns that her speech is pointless - James asks Q, quietly, softly, when they're alone, and apparently the kiss they share is very romantic. Q sighs happily every time he thinks about it, like a twelve year old who just had their crush smile at them for the first time, and Eve finds herself rolling her eyes more often than not at how secretly adorable it all is).

She and Madeleine go to this dance together as well, officially as friends. Eve likes to pretend that it's something more, but that’s pretty hard to do when she loses track of her “date” after only twenty minutes. She eventually finds Madeleine sitting outside, nursing a weak glass of watery fruit punch as she turns another page in her book. Eve herself has only managed to slip away amongst all the commotion - James had been challenged to a shot contest by Bill, and won, if not for the consequences that followed. He had been sitting in the lap of a rather fondly exasperated Q last Eve saw him, singing the praises of his boyfriend, about how "q-ute" he really is and how much James loves him. She wishes the two of those idiots the best of luck, she really does.

"Are you reading?" Eve asks, taking the seat beside her.

"What else would I be doing?" Madeleine closes the book - Oscar Wilde, Eve notes - and then closes her eyes against the cold breeze of the July night. She’s quiet for a while before she speaks again. "Eve?"

"Hm?"

"I want to tell you something."

"Oh?"

“And I don’t want you to think differently of me.”

“Why would I do that?”

She sucks in a sharp breath. "I think I'm bisexual."

Eve lets out a laugh. "Is that all? Madeleine, I’d never look at you differently because of that. There's nothing wrong with being bisexual, you or James.” Madeleine simply hums, as if she doesn’t quite believe her. “How did you find out?"

"That's the point.” Her eyes are open now, staring up at the sky above them, streaked with the colours of the sunset. “I liked someone I shouldn't have."

"What do you mean?"

Those blue eyes flicker to her, almost pleading. " _Eve -_ "

Eve doesn’t even want to hope. "Wait - Do you mean - "

"I just wanted to tell you before I leave,” Madeleine says suddenly, as if in a rush to get the words out before she loses her nerve. “I don't want to not tell you and then regret it for the rest of my life -"

Eve leans over and kisses her, and she can safely say it’s the most magical moment of her entire life.

 

+ 

 

Madeleine Swann leaves that blue house at the end of the street to attend university, but it's okay. Long distance relationships are supposed to be the hardest thing ever, but it's easy, perhaps because everything has always been easy between them. Eve eventually finds a flat to share with Bill, close but a safe distance away from James and Q who appear to be making up for lost time. Hours at a time during parties they go missing, Q returning with marks on his neck that were not there before and a smug James Bond being pulled along behind him. At least Bill is a quiet flatmate, and doesn't complain when Madeleine also moves in with them once she’s completed her undergrad dissertation.

"You're not as bad as them across the hall," he says, referring to Q and James. Madeleine smiles and tucks a paperback under Eve’s arm before she leaves for work.

"I'll give it back as soon as I finish," Eve promises, kissing her.

Madeleine leaves with a fond grin and one last peck on the forehead. "I know you will."

**Author's Note:**

> no copies of 'pride and prejudice' were harmed during the making of this. we love austen in this house.


End file.
